


Past Tense

by MissjuliaMiriam



Series: Garrett Hawke [1]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Gen, Homecoming, Panic Attacks, Parental Failure to Understand Their Child's Mental Illness, Templar Carver Hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 11:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4875694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissjuliaMiriam/pseuds/MissjuliaMiriam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garrett comes home to find that his brother has joined the Templars. Somewhat peripherally, Leandra has no idea how to deal with his anxiety, especially when it manifests in so visible a way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have never had an anxiety/panic attack in my life!! I glossed over it for that reason; hopefully it's okay. 
> 
> My Garrett Hawke does have an anxiety disorder. Leandra is utterly unequipped to deal with it, as you'll see. The second chapter is a little bit of what her and Gamlen are doing while Garrett has his attack. I did my best to be charitable to her without destroying her character or my own headcanon about her behaviour when this sort of thing was going on. Please note: she and Gamlen both say some pretty shitty things about Garrett, but their view do not in any way reflect mine.
> 
> Oh, yeah: Pancake is Garrett's mabari.

The door closes behind his brother - behind a  _Templar_ \- and Garrett finds that suddenly he cannot breathe. His mother has tears in her eyes, and Gamlen in lurking in the corner; Garrett can't focus on them. He can see the grey wall ahead of him, the flaming sword on Carver's breast, the red at the edges of his vision that has haunted him since he first laid eyes on that idol. He can't breathe.

"Garrett," his mother says. "I tried to talk him out of it, I -"

"I can't," Garrett says. It comes out as a strangled gasp. He can't breathe. He can't  _breathe_ . "I c-can't."

His mother reaches for him and he just stands there while she lays her hands on his arms. He can't meet her eyes, or focus on her face. After a moment, she draws away again, with a soft sound of grief. He can feel her gaze on him, Gamlen's, Pancake's. His robes are red with blood at the hems of his sleeves, and stained black with Deep Roads muck where they fall around his ankles. His staff is heavy on his back. Every inch of him feels filthy; he's not bathed in a week at least. They had no way to keep track of the days that deep underground. Garrett cannot tell if time is still passing, or if everything has simply stopped.

He wants everything to  _stop_ .

It is all he can do to stumble into his room. The room he shares with Carver. Shared. Garrett clutches at himself, his arms crossed tightly, his fingers digging into his arms. It's been at least a year since he had a panic attack, he thinks distantly. The thought does not stop him from sinking to his knees in the middle of the floor and letting the world slip away.

Things come back slowly. First, Pancake's warm bulk curled around Garrett. Then the sound of the dog's slow, even breaths. He tried to match their breathing, and eventually succeeds. Garrett is leaning forward, his forehead pressed to the grimy floor of Gamlen's hovel, and he's feeling lightheaded; he must have been hyperventilating. He takes stock of the rest of his own condition distantly, clinically: his face is wet with tears, he's sore and tense, the back of his neck hurts where he dug his nails in deep enough to draw blood. He's been on the ground for a while. He doesn't know if he was crying loudly enough for his mother or Gamlen to hear, but if they had, neither came to help him. Gamlen's no surprise; his mother isn't really either. She never was good at dealing with Garrett's anxiety. That had always been his father's job, and Bethany's, and even Carver's, sometimes. His family had always taken care of him, until suddenly it had become his duty to take care of them. Garrett almost throws up, thinking of his responsibilities, his failed duty, and the tide rises within him again, but he forces everything down. He has to be calm, now, he reminds himself. He's been weak enough for one day.

Carefully, Garrett pries himself up off the floor. It seems like his joints should be creaking audibly, but that would be foolish. A flash of pain at his side reminds him that he's still injured from their jaunt into the Deep Roads, and a fresh bloodstain on his robes says that he reopened the wound. He's not bleeding any more. That's good enough. Garrett struggles out of his clothing and falls into bed, uncaring of the mess on his skin that will surely stain the sheets; they're already stained, and cannot possibly get much worse.

"Garrett?" comes a tentative voice through the door, just as he is starting to slip into sleep.

"Yes, mother?" he replies, and is relieved when she doesn't open the door.

"Are you... are you okay?"

_No_ would be the truth. Nothing will ever be okay again. "I'm fine," Garrett says.

"I'm glad you're home," his mother says. "I'm glad you came home safe, no matter what else happened."

"Yes, mother."

She sighs. "I - I love you, Garrett. Sleep. We'll speak in the morning."

Garrett closes his eyes. Yes. In the morning.

 


	2. Chapter 2

"What's wrong with the boy?"

Leandra sighs and presses her forehead to the door, behind which her eldest boy is lost to the thing that sometimes takes him. She can hear his ragged sobs, but she cannot bring herself to go to him. She doesn't want to see him like that; she knows he wouldn't want her to, anyway. "He's sick."

"That's an understatement," Gamlen says, and actually looking _concerned_. It's liberally mixed with uncertainty, but that's definitely concern. "Is there...?"

"We can only wait. His father could sometimes draw him back, or Bethany, but I never could."

"Clearly not," Gamlen says gruffly. "Is it a magic thing?"

"Malcolm didn't think so."

"Then what is it?"

"Garrett..." Leandra pauses. "Garrett could never describe it in a way that made sense. He'd say things like, _everything goes away except fear,_ and _it makes me feel like I'm going to die._ Once he told me, _I'm broken_. Malcolm told him that wasn't true, but..."

"Sounds broken to me."

"To me as well," she admits in a whisper. "Coming to Kirkwall gave him purpose. It was so much worse when he was a teenager."

"How could it possibly have been _worse_?"

"There were times when he would have a breakdown like this every day for days at a time, or he'd be trapped in his own head for hours. Days when he couldn't get out of bed, or stop crying. Sometimes he'd throw up. Or he'd hurt himself; usually without meaning to, but not always. It... scared me."

Behind the door, Garrett's sobs fade into a low keening, and Leandra closes her eyes. "He's sick," she says again.

"Carver's a foolish young idiot," Gamlen says. "Didn't he realize? Surely he knows about - about this."

"Garrett's been better," Leandra says, but she knows that's no excuse. Carver _did_ know, and he went anyway. He was full of bluster, her younger son, but he'd never been so truly selfish before. She hadn't known quite how bad it would be. Carver wouldn't have known either. And yet.

Gamlen only shakes his head. "I can't listen to this," he says, referring to the wretched noise coming from Garrett's room. He leaves. Leandra is alone, listening to her son cry. She can't bring herself to go to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are welcome as always. I'm on Tumblr as motherfuckingnazgul if you'd care to visit me there.


End file.
